EP #511: How to build a mobile app business – with Apponomics author Peggy Anne Salz

What does it take to build a mobile app business? Not just an app but a mobile app business that thrives – and lasts. That’s what the focus is for this episode and it features the person best suited to take us down that road.

Peggy Anne Salz, founder of Mobile Groove and author Apponomics, jumps online to offer us a glimpse into what it takes to build a successful business in the app economy. This episode explores the key aspects of Apponomics (which is free and available here) and little-known insights that will help you build your mobile app company.

Enjoy!

What does it take to build a mobile app business? Not just an app but a mobile app business that thrives – and lasts. That’s what the focus is for this episode and it features the person best suited to take us down that road.

Peggy Anne Salz, founder ofMobile Grooveand authorApponomics, jumps online to offer us a glimpse into what it takes to build a successful business in the app economy. This episode explores the key aspects of Apponomics (which is free and availablehere) and little-known insights that will help you build your mobile app company.

Full show notes can be found here:

Key takeaways from this episode. Click on the link and the video will take you to that clip

Rob Woodbridge: Hello everybody and welcome to Untether.tv. I’m your host and founder Rob Woodbridge. I’ve got a great guest. You will recognize her from a long time ago on untether.tv, a long-time supporter. And actually one of my co-hosts from something we did called Impulse a couple of years ago. We’re hoping to get some things going again, but in the mean time she has been so, so, so busy and we’re going to be talking about something that I consider the Bible for mobile business. But we’re going to get to that in one second. I want to introduce you to a way that you can actually support untether.tv for those of you who are out there listening. Listen, there’s a great site called Patreon out there, patreon.com.

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All right, now on with the show, here we go. You might remember my guest, Peggy Anne Salz from actually she’s the purveyor of MobileGroove.com which is an amazing resource for all things mobile. She’s based out of Germany. We actually did a show together called impulse. It was a couple of years ago and I long for those days. Peggy, don’t you? Don’t you miss those days?

Peggy Anne Salz: Absolutely Rob. But we’re bringing them back and we’ll bring them back in style. With this, this is some fantastic content and I think the timing is good.

Rob Woodbridge: Well, you know, in the time that I’ve been sitting here doing this shows day after day, week after week, month after month, you’ve written two books. And the latest one is called Apponomics and you can get it at inmobi.com/apponomics and were going to be talking about that extensively here throughout the show. This is a 330 plus page book, 7 chapters, over 30 interviews, one entire year of your life? Maybe it took a year but maybe it took 15 years off. I’m not sure but we can talk about that. You are an author extraordinaire. You write in your sleep and I’m in admiration of what you can actually push out. The people that you reach through this book. Peggy, thank you for coming on and being actually being a guest. It’s a role reverse, I get to ask you questions now which is amazing. Thanks for doing this.

Peggy Anne Salz: Thank you, Rob. It’s fantastic to be here.

Rob Woodbridge: The book came out when?

Peggy Anne Salz: The book came out just in time for Mobile World Congress. It was launched there. There is a paper book. 330 pages but this is the cool thing: after everyone saw the book, then the companies we had approached to say, “Get in the book because you’re a super successful app company and everybody has to know how you did it.” Those companies who said no, we don’t have time, I even got emails saying “We are too busy making fantastic apps to be bothered.” So after the book came out, everyone saw how great it was, they are coming back and want to be in the book.

Rob Woodbridge: Love it.

Peggy Anne Salz: The good news is then, that I am doing five to seven additional interviews with companies like, I’ll tell you now, Rovio, Spotify, great companies, great stories. They’re going to be in the new updated version, which will also be an e-book so yes, and ultimately a mobile app as it should be. So yes, right now its 330 pages but it’s going to get better, so stay tuned.

Rob Woodbridge: It’s going to swell. They are going to find remnants of this printed book 10,000 years down the road and it’ll be like leather bound and we’ll revere it like the Bible back then. Remember those early days? This was the book that changed business. But people are downloading this thing at an incredible rate. 500 a week, over 3,000 downloads to this point. For perspective, when I start to think about those numbers, in Canada, which is where I am, where I live, in order to be a national best seller, that means a best seller across the country, revered on all the talk shows, you need 3,000 sales. So, consider what you’re doing here, the number of people that have downloaded this book and consumed your content, is the equivalent of being a national best seller in Canada; which is incredible to me.

Peggy Anne Salz: That’s phenomenal.

Rob Woodbridge: I get a hundred people reading a blog post and I’m ecstatic. You’ve got over 3,000 people consuming this content and leveraging all of the advice you give in this; so Peggy, congratulations.

Peggy Anne Salz: Thank you.

Rob Woodbridge: Huge congratulations in getting this out the door. So we’re going to be talking about this, for those people who haven’t yet run quickly to inmobi.com/apponomics, A-P-P-O-N-O-M-I-C-S, why don’t you give us an overview of what the book is.

Peggy Anne Salz: Well, that’s just it. That’s what makes this book so special. Yes, it was eight months in the making, but there are also seven chapters.

Rob Woodbridge: Yeah.

Peggy Anne Salz: And a huge appendix with everything in it. And working together in partnership with InMobi, so that’s a, you know, global, major advertising network, advertising platform, technology platform. So I could also pull in some of those global insights as well because I personally don’t know how to be a hit in Korea, but they do, and there is a section about it. I mean, in going global we tell you exactly, you know, here’s CJK, China, Japan, Korea. Here are the five, you know, essential, here’s the checklist. We even have an infographic of, you know, just what do you need to do to be a success in these areas. And I think that is really unique. I’m particularly pleased with that section, because on the other hand, when we wrote it, it was people saying, “Well, this is very interesting, but…” Okay? And this was just eight months ago, you know, plus a few, too, since the launch. But now, we’re saying, “Okay, if you have a great app, go global with it.” You know? Don’t forget that low-hanging fruit. All you need to do, well not all you need to do, but you need to follow certain steps, and you can take a great app global; and why not? Because they love these apps, you know, the Apponomics economy is a global economy, so take advantage of it. And we tell you how to. You know, part of it is localizing content. You have to be careful, some very subtle differences to keep track of. One I can share with you, if you’re interested, that I found fascinating. I wasn’t aware of this one at all. Would you care, Rob?

Rob Woodbridge: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Peggy Anne Salz: Have I got you hooked?

Rob Woodbridge: Yes.

Peggy Anne Salz: Okay.

Rob Woodbridge: You’re drawing me in here, Peggy. Come on.

Peggy Anne Salz: Just to give you an idea of how, first of all, the level of know-how and the level of expertise in the book that, for example, I connected with a company that was taking apps to China from a major, major, super successful app company. So not just your average company, but, you know, sort of your King, your Super cell, that level of a size. And they had a graphic showing a man with a green hat; right? And you’d say, “Okay, my app has a guy with a green hat. No problem here.” It just turns out that the cultural nuance of China is that a man with a green hat is a way people think of a man who is an adulterer, who goes after his wife’s best friend, his best friend’s wife.

Rob Woodbridge: What?

Peggy Anne Salz: Yes. So it’s not a good thing to be a man in a green hat, so they had to change it to more of a terra cotta orange. And I’m serious. And these are the kinds of things you need to think about when you’re going global. But if you get it right, then you are a global success, and you’re going to make more money on app. And I think that’s very key here.

Rob Woodbridge: You know, Peggy, people…I’m going to just take a step back here because we often take about this. And I talk about this with a lot of entrepreneurs, and I talk about this in presentations, and you do as well. But the concept that going mobile or creating a mobile product or mobilizing a piece of your business so that you can extend into different areas of different markets, people always look at this and think that’s it’s easy. That it’s a piece of cake, that it’s democratized, you know, the ability to globalize your business, but my guess is, and I keep running into this, is that they don’t understand. And I happen to think that mobile, just in general, is one of the most time-intensive financial commitments that any company will ever make, and the challenge for them is to do it right, because it could be a catastrophe if they don’t do right. That’s what you’re kind of bringing to light in this book. The small things are huge. Just because you don’t know and the impact could be pretty substantial on your business, right?

Peggy Anne Salz: Absolutely. I mean, if you’re not constantly also checking and thinking about, you know, you have a winning variation, you have a winning approach, but is it always winning? So it’s never done. But that’s the point of the book. That’s why I’m particularly pleased with this book, is because this is a handbook, this is a knowledge resource we all need because the app economy needs to work. It needs to be global. It needs to be all-inclusive. That’s the whole idea. I mean, it already is democratizing access for a lot of companies, for a lot of people, for people in their garages.

Rob Woodbridge: Yep.

Peggy Anne Salz: So it’s very important to give them, I think, the tools they need to understand, not just how to get a download. We already know, Rob, that a download is not a measure of success.

Rob Woodbridge: Is not worth anything, no.

Peggy Anne Salz: It’s not worth anything. I wasn’t going to be that cruel, but it’s not a measure…

Rob Woodbridge: It’s not worth anything.

Peggy Anne Salz: …it’s not a measure, yeah. So this is the book of the…

Rob Woodbridge: Peggy, I always say in my presentations that downloads are B.S. If you count downloads, you might as well just pack up your stuff and go home. They’re B.S. So, carry on I didn’t mean to interrupt there.

Peggy Anne Salz: Absolutely. This book is about how to acquire, not only users, but how do you acquire high quality users? How do you acquire high-quality users at global scale? How do you monetize your app properly? Is it going to be an app purchase with advertising, for example? Which makes a lot of sense, because people that are buying your app and making purchases inside your app, that’s great, but that’s not the majority, obviously. What are you going to do with 80% that aren’t buying? Well, you certainly want to do something to monetize them so then you come to something like mobile advertising as a way to monetize that audience. You also have to think about customer lifetime value. You have to start thinking about that and we have a section in the book as well. We’ve drawn from Eric Souferd [SP] who is over in Berlin, who has just written a book about this himself. I crowdsourced him into the book and I said “For me, you’re the man in LTV. Share some of the ways that you do this.” He can calculate LTV in a spreadsheet, which I think is amazing. It’s beyond the scope of the book to do that, but we do give you some ideas about that. I think having all of these aspects of your business in check enables you to create, what I think, is more important than having an app business is having a sustainable app business, and that’s what this book is about.

Rob Woodbridge: Do you think of people think about lifetime value?

Peggy Anne Salz: Not yet. They should. They really should.

Rob Woodbridge: I think we’re still in the stage of culling, right; which is basically bringing as many users in as possible, and the consideration that the numbers are dropping off on the back end as you try to bring more in. I don’t think that a lot of you are considering that now. But getting people in the door and keeping them, or keeping more of them in the door, in my opinion, should be the focus of every mobile business, or every business is looking at mobile.

Peggy Anne Salz: Absolutely. I’m not going to say “We cover that too, Rob”, but I mean the second chapter is all about the discovery dilemma because in many cases, first of all, that’s the big hurdle period and end of story, but there are ways to use paid as well as free, you know unpaid, to get over that hurdle. A lot of this, and I called in my friend Ken Herron, who was in my first app book, The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps, because for me he’s mister social media marketing. He writes columns at Mobile Groove, he advises clients on social media marketing and mobile, and I thought at first, I have this book to write it’s got a be all about the app economy. I’m sorry Ken, there’s not a place for you. And then, when you realize, it’s like no, because it’s all about being discovered and part of that discovery is still the very basics of social media marketing. Have your community, have your social media presence all lined up, do it long before you launch, do it while you’re launching, do it after your launching, do it all the time. You know, connect, listen, don’t just broadcast; listen. These are all the rules of getting your app discovered, they’re all there again.

Rob Woodbridge: I talked to, I didn’t talk to him, I overheard Keith here in a podcast say he started a social network called Just.Me, and he said that the acquisition component, the challenge he was facing, was that he could spend $5 or $10 million to acquire 5000 users, loyal users. You think about the churn that has to happen with that, but who has that kind of money to be able to do this on regular basis? And that’s only 5000 users. And always thought, if you’re at the point where you are forcing the issue like that, where you’re spending millions of dollars to drive users, your user base, then there’s not a product market fit, is there? Because if you’re spending all that money, it’s like you’re forcing people, you’re getting in their face, and you kind of like force the issue to get them to download and start using the product, right? So it’s either in your marketing message alerts in your product fit that there’s a disconnect, if you’re spending that much money, and nobody has that much money to spend on customer acquisition.

Peggy Anne Salz: No and I’ve got some sections in the appendix of the book about helpful tips and hints and ways to sort of have a reality check on your strategy and it’s very clear there. If that’s what’s happening, then pull the plug on it. What do you need to expect? What do you need to spend? How many markets do you need a launch in? These are the questions that I cover there. Just to another point about your colleague in that story is a similar story in this book; where one of the people I talk with he said, “It works” but then you stop it just plummets. So what are you going to do? It’s this constant . . . You’re almost paying somebody. It takes on its own momentum, but you get to a point, yes, you’re super, super successful, but then so is the dive super steep, right? So it has to be a balance there, and there’s a lot that goes into that. There are no answers. I’m just saying it’s the answers, but it gives you enough that you can say I can apply this to my business. And above all I have a reality check for my business because a lot of app developers companies out there they’re sort of running blind. There are so many that are just figuring out traffic and analytics, which if you don’t have analytics ever your business is always running blind.

Rob Woodbridge: There is something to be said around things like understanding the realities of this market and, you know, look, I call it the trough of despair which is what most app developers get into, especially we . . . That could be an enterprise or it can be direct to consumer or it can be business. You kind of go through this entire process of building your application; so that is the scoping of it, understanding what the market might look like. You do maybe a little business plan. You get an assessment of the competition. You do all that kind of stuff before you lay the code. Then you start coding’ you find the coders. You do the design, the UI, the UX, and you go through that process. Then you do some prototyping, some beta testing. You do all that kind of stuff. And then you spend maybe a year, nine months, through that process from idea to product complete. You launch the product and within three days, if you do everything right, which for a long time meant talk to TechCrunch and talk to Mashable and all of the other tech blogs. If you do everything right, your average lifespan is three days anyway. And so you spend all that time building this product out, all the thought that went into it for three days of glory, and then you hit this trough of despair. And the trough of despair is a huge plummet from victory — you’re in the top at the app store for a little bit — and then you fade off into oblivion and obscurity. It’s not an easy business to be a part of, so I think how does the book paint the picture of reality for everybody who should be in this business. But how does it paint the reality for app marketers and the guys who are out there trying to flog their products?

Peggy Anne Salz: What I’m particularly proud of in the book is also that although it is primarily focused on where we are right now, and where we are right now is games. Games are the big money maker. It is the top category of apps; followed by social and da da-da-da.

Rob Woodbridge: Yep.

Peggy Anne Salz: I’m personally a great believer in utilities. I’m very passionate, and I’m supported by research that says edutainment is coming. So mobile education in an accessible and enjoyable way so primarily for children. And we do have [Anita] Shaw from EFlashApps, and she and her husband great . . . I’d love to have them here actually, Rob. You’d love them because they’ve made a complete success out of teaching the English language to toddlers on an app. So that’s where I see the future, not dissing the gamers here. I’m not saying that, but what I’m proud of here is that we deal with the here and now so we have how do you make a success out of your gaming/entertainment business. Also, what are the considerations when you have a utility app? What are the considerations when you have a social app? What are even the considerations when you have an app that is none of the above? You can still have a feel for this. It’s extremely important because, yes, you do have to spend on marketing and advertising. Think through these things, but if, for example, you have a utility app what you don’t want to do is you can’t market it the same way because it has to prove its utility by definition.
So really what you need to do is tinker on it, work on it, get it right, get your community, use your lead users — that’s what they’re there for. You give it to them. They’re going to give you feedback, what they want in it, what they didn’t like in it, et cetera. You need to have that testing, that rapport when you have a winning app, when you have, say, 50,000 downloads, when you have a community of users that size. Then you can kick in with the advertising, with the paid marketing, the paid app advertising, to really make something out of that audience. And maybe it’s not that, maybe it’s just cross promotion. Maybe you’re going to have a fantastic app that does something in, say, for example, taking pictures. So a camera type of app, but you’re going to have an offer wall that shows someone something about music, so it’s similar, but different, and work it out that way. There’s so many different approaches to this, and that’s what I love about the book is it’s not a singular focus book. It looks at it holistically and says “If you have this of app go this way, these are the options open to you. This is a business, here are your options, you decide.”

Rob Woodbridge: It’s like a matrix of some sort.

Peggy Anne Salz: Yeah, it’s almost like those 3D chess, you know.

Rob Woodbridge: Yeah, [Stratego].

Peggy Anne Salz: It is. It is in a way.

Rob Woodbridge: Yes, because you know, when you start to think about that, is that there’s got to be some customer acquisition strategies that are unique to the type of application, and not just the genre of application, whether it’s game or utility, but the specific type of game or specific type of utility, and then you layer on the monetization strategies across that. Maybe advertising works over here, but it doesn’t work over here. Maybe rewards work here, but they don’t work here.

Peggy Anne Salz: Yes.

Rob Woodbridge: So, you know, there’s so many levers that app developers, and marketers, and businesspeople can pull, and what we’re seeing in the marketplace, I think right now, is just kind of like a trying this one size fits all, right, which is this launch strategy which is a uniform launch strategy and that doesn’t work. So how much thought do you think has to be put into that process alone? Understanding what type of application it is and then looking from there to see what your options are. Does it require a lot of thought ahead of time?

Peggy Anne Salz: It requires a lot of thought; I mean I give a lot of checklists. There’s a lot of guidance in this direction, but you mention one point that’s actually the final chapter of the book that touches upon this because the good news and bad news is, you have a lot of options as an app developer, as an app company, even as a brand with a branded app. I don’t touch upon brands here specifically but they face the same thing. I mean if I’m a brand with an app, how do people download my app? How do they find me?

Rob Woodbridge: And why would they use it a second time, and a third time?

Peggy Anne Salz: And why would they use it a second time? What’s the utility? What’s the value exchange, etcetera? But what we touch on in the final chapter which is my personal favorite because it always looks ahead. It’s just the tougher one is that you have option throughout the life cycle of the app and I break down the life cycle of your app because you do certain things at the launch, certain things when you’re scaling, certain things when you’ve got it right, but also what’s coming next is the targeting and the retargeting. So when you’re talking about, you know, how do you get people to use the app or how do you reward them? Well you also want to be watching and you want to be watching the feedback that comes through, quote, unquote, big data, but there are technology platforms out there like InMobi, but also you need the other. You’ll get input from other places, not only one source is going to give you all of the signals that you need to read, the user signals. Because if you can say, for example, “Here’s my super user, they’re buying everything in the app, love them”, then you do not want to show them advertising, right? But you do want to show the laggards advertising, and you need to understand the user signals of what the user is doing in your app, maybe what the user is doing elsewhere, so in social networks or elsewhere.
Of course, privacy concerns, that’s a given, but to get a holistic view of the user in order to market to them holistically, and that is a challenge, and it’s going to be facing all app developers as well, because as we get past the point of saying, “Yes, you are my user, great. How do I give you what you want? How do I target you in such a way that I’m going to reward you for what you’re doing, but also encourage you in the right directions?” This is another area where app developers are going to need to look at their options, but again, in the book I list nearly seven user scenarios of like, you’re seeing the signals tell you this, you need to do that. So good news is, there’s a lot of options; bad news is, there’s a lot of options. But the book, I’m proud of because it will take you through that and get you started.

Rob Woodbridge: Yeah, I mean, it’s just, as you’re talking about it you understand the complexities of this industry as it’s emerging and we’re all trying to learn almost at the same time as we’re doing. But it’s why untether.tv is here. It’s why I do this, is to bring these lessons to light. So that you can learn from other people’s mistakes and build upon what they did so that we can start to perfect these practices. But one thing that you notice is that people follow this same path, right? Which is, it almost seems like, and we didn’t talk about this before but I want to get your thought on this is that we seem to treat our repeat customers on a level playing field, like the committed customers on a level playing field with the new customers so what I mean by that is I look at the newspaper industry, for example. Like the online media spaces that we’re seeing all of these paywalls going up across all of these newspapers. What they’re saying is that you’re allowed to come and read twelve or fifteen stories a month, but on the sixteenth one, you have to pay us, right, because we’ve proved enough value. I was just arguing with these guys that said, “You’re penalizing your number one customer.”

Peggy Anne Salz: Yeah.

Rob Woodbridge: Because if they’re coming back 15 times in a month, that is a metric, to me, that is invaluable. That is a committed viewer. That is a committed user. And on the 16th, when you put a pay wall in front of them, they’re going to go elsewhere, and they’re never going to come back, and you’ve lost a committed customer. Penalize the guy that comes in one or two times a month, embrace the people that come in 15 or 16 times a month, because that is a rare, rare, rare person. The same thing in the mobile space, is that you can’t treat that person — at the very beginning you want to nurture them along, but at some point, there’s a benefit, not a crutch. You got to give them a benefit for being in there as often as they are. And if not, they’re going to go find the other app, or the other 50 apps, that do the exact same thing. So I wonder. That’s a trend that frustrates me, is that we seem to penalize, and we look at those guys who are in there day after day as, “Oh, those are going to be our bread and butter,” but you’ve got to find a more subtle way for those guys than the new entrants. Does that make sense?

Peggy Anne Salz: Absolutely. I mean, you talk about penalize, but I would also just say monetize.

Rob Woodbridge: Yeah, yeah.

Peggy Anne Salz: So the ones who don’t come in very often. The same way in an app, you have people who are going to come in, they’re going to say, “Oh in that purchase, I want another level. I want to have the abilities to make it further in the game,” or, “I want to have the answer to the quiz,” or whatever it is. They buy that, those tips, that’s great. It’s the people who are not buying in your app that you need to monetize. And that’s where you need to figure out. How am I going to show them advertising? How am I going to monetize that; and also your options there? Interstitials are ruling, banner is giving way to native, and we can have a whole other show on that.

Rob Woodbridge: We will.

Peggy Anne Salz: In fact, I’m looking forward to that, about native. Because then you have also the challenge — and this is going to be solved soon, because I have some information about products in the pipeline out there, but native is effective, but native is also custom, so how do you scale that? That’s another entirely different topic right now. But you have to look at your art and creative strategy. So your creative strategy and your monetization strategy, they have to be going hand-in-hand. But absolutely; and how do you get this? Is by knowing your user, and having your analytics, and having your tracking, and understanding what channels are bringing me my most valuable users. And this is all possible right now, it’s just a matter of understanding, implementing, and also using the information and applying that to your business. It’s not as if this is all brand new, but the approach of using it this way is brand new. This is a very integrated approach, and I think that’s what’s been missing, is seeing your app business as a business. And then understanding, “In my life cycle, I do this at that stage, I do this at that stage,” and really mapping out your mobile app. Which is what this is, it’s mapping out the life cycle of your mobile app. What are you options at every stage? And what is going to make you money at every stage?

Rob Woodbridge: That’s important. It’s like it’s growing up. Is that what you feel like?

Peggy Anne Salz: Yeah, absolutely. I’m excited, because we’re talking about apps now differently than we did a year or two ago, Rob, because we’re seeing it now as a seriously sustainable business. We’re treating it seriously. Yes, I do have a section in the book, because people wanted it , how do I spend? What do I do to get in the top 25; because there are occasions when that’s going to make sense. It’s going to make a lot of sense if you’re doing a seasonal thing. Everybody wants to be at the top of that list around the holidays, so what do you do and how do you do it? I won’t share all the secrets here, we’ll save that for other shows, but that is part of it. But now we’re talking about it in very different terms, about not just, “How do I get in the top 25 ranking?” but, “How do I get my users to come back? How do I acquire quality users, as opposed to all users on the planet?” That’s different here.

Rob Woodbridge: How long have you been involved in mobile, Peggy?

Peggy Anne Salz: I’m a veteran in mobile.

Rob Woodbridge: You’ve got your badges, and you’ve got your scars.

Peggy Anne Salz: I’m seasoned. I actually counted, because I had to take out some time, because people were like, “You’ve been doing a book for eight months, what else have you been doing?” So I went back and I actually counted. I’m a nine time mobile author now, to count all the books I’ve done, including the Netsize guides, the books I’ve written on behalf of SAT Mobile services about mobile commerce and mobile operator.

Rob Woodbridge: Some analyst guides at Gigaom as well.

Peggy Anne Salz: Oh, lots of white papers and reports. And also the first book, here, I’ll hold it up there; that started it all. Because I was approached by this company, F+W Media, and they said, “Okay, you know about mobile, you write this book.” And on the basis of this book, then I was approached and they said, “Well, that’s a great book on how you make a mobile app, and sort of construct your business architecture strategy.” How do you make money? How do you monetize your app? That’s what “Apponomics” is all about. So, if you sort of put them both together you could, sort of, almost have the seed of, of what you need for your business strategy, between the two books. I’m not pushing them, because “Apponomics” is great to download, right, but I think it’s important, because we need these types of knowledge resources in order to kick start the economy.

Rob Woodbridge: I think so, and, and you, you know this is from over thirty interviews you’re, you’ve collated all of this information. So, it becomes the best practices, and, and as I said, you’re going to be updating it, but, yeah, and I contributed a chapter to the first, the first book on case studies; which was from untethered.tv, [actually].

Peggy Anne Salz: Absolutely, yes, which is the future of global. Which, was fantastic, I have to thank you again for, for real life case studies. Which, I think, I mean, I can do it, because I’m not, I’m not on tether, I’m you’re supporter, and I can commend you for consistently bringing those case studies to light, because it’s only by talking with the people who are doing it that we’re going to understand what they did, and how we can possibly productize this. It’s not anywhere else, but through you’re interviews, and through your contribution to my book that we know what people are doing, and in the “Apponomics” book I talk with app developers. I talk with app companies.

Rob Woodbridge: Yeah.

Peggy Anne Salz: How did you do it? What were the choices you made, and more importantly, what didn’t you do?

Rob Woodbridge: Absolutely. What would you have done? What would you have done differently, is the best question, right?

Peggy Anne Salz: Right.

Rob Woodbridge: When you, when you go through this, and so, you’re removed from the book now. You’ve had enough time to digest it. Was there one thing, or two things, start with one thing that really stood out for you, and we’ll end on this, that surprised you. That shocked you. That, that you know, basically held up a long time belief that, actually, became concrete. Was there anything in there that you though, “Wow, that is amazing. I didn’t know that”?

Peggy Anne Salz: I would say, it’s after you launch the app, how you get to that next big milestone in your business, and I was thinking, well you know, you just sort of, it just sort of all comes together. You do your tweeting. You do your social media, and you do the right creative, and the right ad, and you do all that stuff. Right, exactly.

Rob Woodbridge: Exactly.

Peggy Anne Salz: Yeah, and I thought was interesting was how you approach the global market, and how and how much opportunity is in the global market, and that you should launch, you know, you should take a certain number of companies. I suggest, you know, three and then you spend a certain amount in each market, and you grow from there, but that you can grow from there. I think that was what was so amazing is the opportunities, because, and I have that also, I think I took it from a, just you know, a report. It might have been, but you know a fascinating. All the countries in the world where English is a key language, although, it’s not the native language, and where you can be a hit with your app, and so, that for me was the surprise; it’s great to be hit in your home market, or maybe your neighboring market. I’m based in Europe. So, you think okay, hitting Holland, France, Germany, Switzerland, what have you, but to see the bigger global picture, and to understand the opportunities for your app. That was a surprise, and I’m hoping that it inspires other app developers to think outside the box. Think outside their home market. See the opportunities.

Rob Woodbridge: I think that that’s the most important lesson here. Is that everybody focus’, I’m in Canada, that everybody focus’ in the U.S., and we talk about companies that have come up to Canada as they’re Beta testing, and have enjoyed great success in Canada, and I know great Canadian companies that have launched in china, or launched in India first, or, or launched in Russia first, ahead of any of the bigger markets so that they could build that base first. Get the feedback, and then bring it back into, into their own country, and then launch somewhere else. What a great strategy. Alright, so…

Peggy Anne Salz: That’s my favorite one, and then creative, thinking about your creative, and be testing on your creative. How that’s constantly evolving. That was also amazing. There’s a lot of psychology that goes with that. A lot of strategy goes in that. I share it in the book, I won’t take up your time now, but if you say what surprised me, those. You’re never done, that’s what surprised me. You’re never done.

Rob Woodbridge: And then what you…

Peggy Anne Salz: And there is a way just to clench the deal. That’s the good part.

Rob Woodbridge: And then once you think you’re done, you’re dead, right. So, I think that that’s the key. Like, when you stop you’re done. Like, if you think about what Rovio was doing, and, and they’re riding this very well, and they’ve changed the game play with this, you know, Angry Birds Epic. It’s a little bit different, different approach. Like, you just never stop, and I think that that’s one of the key things, and I know Peggy, you never stop. You never stop writing. You never stop writing. You never stopped, you know, contributing content. So, we’re going to drive people to MobileGroove.com. That’s Peggy’s home base, and I always think that we should be rewarding those that are giving us the content, and so go to MobileGroove.com. Mobile, you know how to spell that by now. Groove, G-R-O-O-V-E dot com; lots of great articles, you know. An archive of Peggy’s Podcast, and she records that weekly as well, and then if you’re interested in the book it is a free download. Now, free is relative, you’re going to have to contribute some of your own personal information to this in order to get it, but if you want to go to inmoby.com. I- N-M-O-B- Y./apponomics A-P-P-O-N-O-M-I-C-S. Contribute to the conversation that’s going on in this mobile world. Read the book, and let Peggy know what you think about it, and I’m sure that if you have a great story you should reach out to Peggy, and maybe, just maybe you could be a case study, or part of her next book. If there is one, good God, there’s always going to be…

Peggy Anne Salz: They always stay around, it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop, but I enjoy it. I enjoy it immensely. I make it accessible.

Rob Woodbridge: Well Peggy, this is a, to me, this is as I’ve said, this is the Bible for mobile business. You’d be remiss if you didn’t download it, you know, and just, just because at the end of every chapter there is tactical implementation ideas. Just, go and do this. Here’s your checklist to go and do, and I think if you download it just for that you’ll be better off, and avoid all the mistakes that others have had. Peggy, thank you for being on Untethered.tv as a guest. I love it. Thank you for doing this.

Rob Woodbridge: Yes, I hope so too. Alright, we’ve been speaking with Peggy Anne Salz, she is the purveyor on mobilegroove.com. Go to mobilegroove.com if you want the book. Which, you should download the book. You have to download this book. I am actually mandating that all you guys out there download this book, go to inmoby / apponomics. There will be a test on it. So the next time you come to Untethered.tv there will be a test in order for you to get into the next episode. Thank you for watching, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing thank you for bringing untether.tv into your day. We will see you next time. Thank you, Peggy.

Peggy Anne Salz: Thank you, Rob.

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About Peggy Anne SalzPeggy produces and promotes custom research on behalf of global clients and industry organizations including the Mobile Marketing Association.

Peggy is best known as the lead author of The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps: A Practical Guide to Affordable Mobile App Development for Your Business (F+W Media Inc.), a practical, crowd-sourced book providing businesses and developers with insights on how to make, monetize and market mobile apps. The popular print book was recently released as an Ebook, cementing its position as a leading resource for the App Economy.

She has also edited and produced the Mobile Operator Guide 2013: The Evolution of Mobile Services: Challenges, Strategies, Opportunities and the SAP Mobile Commerce Guide 2013: Engage Customers & Build Loyalty In Developed And Emerging Markets (on behalf of SAP Mobile Services). Peggy is also the author of four editions of the Netsize Guide, an annual mobile industry almanac published by Netsize, a Gemalto company. She is currently working on a number of projects including an advanced guide to help app developers to acquire quality users and build a sustainable app business, and an educational resource to help marketers master the challenge of multi-channel marketing.

Peggy is also a GigaOM PRO mobile analyst, where her focus is mobile loyalty, mobile messaging and mobile retail. Her first industry report, Mobile Search & Content Discovery (Informa Telecoms & Media), was regarded as the first in-depth study of its kind, establishing Peggy as an authority on mobile search and content discovery technologies. More recently, her series of practical how-to white papers, covering the basics of mobile advertising and mobile analytics, have earned her a reputation as a leading mobile marketing and advertising authority.

Peggy has established a successful career based on vision, insight, versatility, and more than 15 years of industry experience. Her articles and analysis have appeared in magazines and online destinations such as The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Mobile Entertainment, Mobile Media, New Media Age, and in the Agile Minds column in EContent magazine, among many more.Graduating with honors from the University of Pittsburgh, Peggy earned a B.A. in Philosophy of Science, Political Science, and Economics. She is a Fulbright fellow and a member of the International Who’s Who of Professionals
– See more at: http://www.mobilegroove.com/aboutus/#sthash.6jIVTaAR.dpuf

About the author

Rob Woodbridge

I'm Rob, the founder of UNTETHER.tv and I've spent 14 years immersed in the mobile and pervasive computing world. During this great time I've helped some of the most innovative companies grow their business through mobile. If you are in need of a mobile business advisor or coach, connect with me here to get things rolling.